Introduction

Abstract

This book is the product of an interaction between my long-standing interest in the historical figure of Ivan the Terrible, on the one hand, and the more recent appearance of Russian and western studies of Stalin which draw an analogy between the Soviet leader and the first tsar, on the other. Several years ago I published a book on the image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore.¹ This had started life as a study of popular monarchism in the sixteenth century;² problems of sources and methodology, however, meant that it included broader discussion of Russian and Soviet scholarship relating to the complex and controversial figure of Ivan Groznyi, and I became particularly fascinated by the way in which he had been treated in the Stalin period. The book’s conclusion briefly explored the intriguing parallels between Groznyi and Stalin; and speculated about the ways in which they might have influenced the attitudes of Soviet scholars towards the tsar.